The Dungeon of Harrow

This movie tries to be more than it is. First of all, the acting is horrible. You have to get past the incredibly bad delivering of lines and terrible emoting. The plot is quite interesting. A shipwreck occurs (apparently because it was made out of strings and balsa wood), and a couple of guys find themselves on shore. If this weren't bad enough, some guy named Count de Sade is living there as well. He lives in fear of pirates and has gone utterly insane. Anyway, he has a large slave, a young woman, and some dogs. There's another woman who doesn't speak and his wife, who is a leper. Anyway, things get bad as these men have to deal with this nut case. He is arrogant and likes to pose and deliver lines. The rest of the movie involves an attempt to escape. It has an ironic ending which I won't reveal and it kind of rescues the film. I wouldn't bother if I were you.

I've seen me a lot of bad movies, and I've seen me a lot of low budget movies.

Note: those two are NOT necessarily the same! I shouldn't even have to say this, but everyone who has watched at least a few movies (and that includes almost everyone in the United States), has had this experience; you go to a theater or turn on a movie channel. Sometimes you get a huge budget major studio film that is oddly hollow, perfunctory and disappointing. Sometimes you get a film that is entertaining in spite of its low budget, transcending its limitations.

The latter is what we get here. In the world of low budget film-making, there are a few "cheats" that can be used to make up for a lack of sumptuous screen images. One is great acting. Another is great writing. We are not treated to either of those in DUNGEON OF HARROW.

But we are treated to a creepy, hallucinatory atmosphere which is quite effective, and gives the viewer a bang for the buck infinitely out of proportion with its tiny budget. Remember, this is (to speak simplistically) a period Gothic horror film shot in Texas in 1963 for a budget under $50,000. Keeping that in mind, the filmmakers and actors have come up with quite a laudable final product. Fans of CARNIVAL OF SOULS can expect similar chills on a small budget, though COS is a much better film.

For a couple of bucks, or in a cheap DVD box set, this film is well worth your time if you like late show type horror thrills.

UPDATE: This film is in the Public Domain. Readily available on YouTube or other streaming video options for free.

Survivors of a shipwreck come ashore on a tiny island, inhabited by a mad Count and his sickly wife(who is kept confined within the subterranean dungeon of his castle). Foreseeable, derivative mayhem transpires.

Could DUNGEON OF HARROW really be from the 1960s? Besides the fact that it's in color, it bears the distinct stylistic flavor of poverty-row horror films released during and shortly after the Great Depression. Amusingly unpersuasive ship in a storm effects are the highlight of a chiefly slumberous little movie, which makes fairly good use of hand-me-down Gothic sets. It's a barely median example low-budget indie horrors of the 1960s, which imparts a couple of mild, fleeting shocks, but is roundly too tame and conventional to be of much interest to the cult/trash-film alliance, and there's little to impress any but the most forgiving classic horror fans. Still and all, it's fairly well handled where the technical rudiments of production are concerned, and the no-name players provide variably acceptable performances. Non-essential, but not exactly a head-to-toe failure, either.

4.5/10.

Here we have a film that looks like it was filmed over a long weekend. We know right away what we are in for during a storm-at-sea scene when the ships captain (Henry Garcia) bangs on a passengers door and the whole plywood set shakes. This is followed by a shot of a miniature ship in someones swimming pool. Stick around, this one has just GOT to be fun. Sure enough, the captain (Mr. Garcia who also co-wrote and co-produced) and Mr. Fallon (Russ Harvey) son of the ships owner, find themselves washed up on the island of Count DeSade (Bill McNulty). The Count has a little problem . . .he's crazy and terribly paranoid, believing everyone who comes to his island is a pirate. The captain soon finds himself imprisoned in the castle torture chamber while Fallon and Count DeSade's nurse Cassandra (Helen Hogan) try to plot a way off the island of madness. Directed by Pay Boyette, the artist who drew "Howard The Duck", this is the sort of movie Drive-In Cinema managers lived for. An early scene stresses how insane Count DeSade is. He sees a ghostly figure (Lee Morgan, a late night TV horror show host who gets "Guest Star" billing) who claims to be a physical incarnation of his own madness and sees snakes and giant spiders. The prolonged torture of the captain gets pretty tough to watch as the film goes on but the encounter between Fallon and DeSade's leprous, mad wife (Eunice Grey) is truly nightmarish.

Performances are . . .well . . .everyone does the best they can, which sadly is not saying much. Michele Buquor is okay as Anne, mute servant girl. In a nod to the 1960's she is miniskirted and barefoot like a time transplanted hippie chick. Standing out is Maurice Harris as Mantis, the count's devoted servant. he gets some of the best dialog in the picture and his line just before he dies is a sleaze movie classic. Lovers of low budget scary movies owe it to themselves to see this one at least once. No, make that twice; you'll want to see it again to make sure you weren't hallucinating the first time.

This film just screams cheap-jack 60's horror comics ala Creepy and Eerie, and I mean screams with a capital S, and no surprise really, being director Boyette was a well-known horror comic scribe/artiste. Where "Creepshow" failed in really capturing that "EC-vibe", "Dungeon" succeeds 100% in getting that surreal budget label Charlton Comics thing down to a tee! I say, turn it on, shut down you brain and just soak in the oddness, and this film is way odd, dreamlike really, and best watched while slightly groggy after 1 AM (it has a similar dreamy quality akin to the classic poverty row noir "Detour" in this regard, call me crazy)...that said, though, I really only recommend it to hardcore genre fans, regional horror obscurity weirdos (like myself, especially fans of Texas-lensed regional oddities), and retro horror comic fans, so if this sounds like you, Dungeons is pure gold. Now, if someone could please find Boyette's lost film "The Weird One's" my life would be complete.